Mike Austin's Blog

Alesis Compressor/limiter

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:32:00 +0000

I got tired of continuously changing the volume in movies I watch - from quiet whispers to huge explosions and gunfire, so I tried using a compressor/limiter usually used for recording. The Alesis 3630 is relatively inexpensive, and is easy to set up. It also has blinking lights, and I like blinking lights :) I've watched a few action movies so far, and it works great. It's transparent in that you don't notice that it's working.

Mag+: a beautiful concept digital magazine reader

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 22:23:00 +0000

Mag+: a beautiful concept digital magazine reader

Loading local web resources on iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:24:00 +0000

I wanted to learn how to load web resources locally, so I finally found how:

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource: "test.html" ofType: @""];
[self.webView loadRequest: [NSURLRequest requestWithURL: [NSURL fileURLWithPath: path]]];

Objective-C is pretty convoluted sometimes!
Also, you have to make your javascript resources non-executable

Stevie play the drums

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:45:00 +0000

QWERTY makes a comeback on Dvorak

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:44:00 +0000

Link

Quite possibly true

What Killed Smalltalk Could Kill Ruby, Too

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:57:00 +0000

Video

i.e., don't put walls up around your "perfect system", and always write tests. I have found unit tests helpful while developing Impulse, a dynamic language. Any time I changed something and ran it, the tests would show if I broke something. The more detailed the tests, the better.

Genetic algorithms for code

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:56:00 +0000

Acovea
Using Natural Selection to Investigate Software Complexities

Microsoft brainwashing

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:14:00 +0000

"Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of the familiar Web browser that you are most comfortable using."

Ummm, I guess I can't have my own oppinion??

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:35:00 +0000

Are Apple developers high?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 01:47:00 +0000

[options titleForSegmentAtIndex: [segment selectedSegmentIndex]];

...is beyond verbose, it's insane! Why not this:

[[options currentSegment] title];

???

Graphical df: Disk Inventory X

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:14:00 +0000

I'm running out of room on my Mac Mini (iPhone SDK is huge!), so I found this program to help clean it up:

Disk Inventory X

The Nissan 370z has a fiving ugly face?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:57:00 +0000

"It looks like a catfish with Down's Syndrome got clubbed in the face with a 9-iron. What the crap?"

The Nissan 370z has a fiving ugly face.

Hmmm, yes, it does. Long live the 350z!

The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:59:00 +0000

The iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme

Disk Drop

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:50:00 +0000

Disk Drop

Wild Wild Firefly?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Mon, 25 May 2009 06:51:00 +0000

I just tried watching Firefly - what's up with the western theme??

Hmmm

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:16:00 +0000

> I just realized Jeff Bridges aka The Dude, was in Tron. It will never be the same again.
>> XD
>> that reminds me: I need more Kahlua
> lol
> no no no no no no no no
>> what.
> yes

Add regular expression search to Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 17 May 2009 21:45:00 +0000

/Find Bar/ 1.0.1
A souped up findbar with regular expression capabilities

Language amusements

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Sun, 17 May 2009 05:48:00 +0000

I've been working on my language, Impulse, and can now finally evaluate somewhat amusing expressions:

Impulse

f = x -> (1..x) each: n -> puts: x + n
f eval: 5

Ruby

f = lambda { |x| (1..x).each { |n| puts n * n } }
f.call 5

The Ruby version isn't bad, but it's sure got lots of curlies and bars. Ultimately I want to support predicate blocks, which only evaluate if the predicate is true:

(1..10) map: n [n is-even?] -> n * n

Gprof2Dot: Convert profiling output to a dot graph

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:53:00 +0000

Gprof2Dot

MinGW runs under Wine!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:03:00 +0000

No need for a Windows machine to compile Windows apps! :)

Shoes graphics toolkit

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:33:00 +0000

Shoes is a tiny graphics toolkit, designed for beginners. But make no mistake: this is real programming. You can make real, colorful apps in Shoes.

Top 10 Most Memorable Movie Cars

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Top 10 Most Memorable Movie Cars

Windows to Ubuntu 9.04

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:28:00 +0000

My Windows box is slowly dying, so I decided to try using my Linux box as my main machine. I copied over my Thunderbird and Firefox profiles and viola - my e-mail, feeds and newgroups are working! There were a couple hiccups, like Yahoo! News is "99b0bbe5", which I just have to rename.

Here are a few simple things I did to customize it to my liking:

System > Preferences > Appearance
Theme: Clearlooks

/usr/share/themes/Clearlooks/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
style "default" {
GtkScrollbar::slider-width = 18 # Make scrollbars a touch larger
GtkMenu::vertical-padding = 4 # Even out spacing for top and bottom menu items
}

/home/Mike/.inputrc
"\e[A": history-search-backward # simply begin typing and press up-arrow to search history
"\e[B": history-search-forward
set show-all-if-ambiguous on # Stop having to pres tab twice to see all command completions

If I can get Photoshop working in Wine, that would be the ultimate.

Why do people keep saying "emails"??

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:41:00 +0000

Do you read your snail "mails"? I don't think so. Stop it! :)

Matt Aimonetti - narcissist?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Austin) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:57:00 +0000

“GoGaRuCo attendees who were offended, I’m sorry for offending you, I didn’t have that intention at all”

He keeps saying he's apologized to everyone he's offended, but the above is not an apology, it's a twisted insult. Either he has no empathy, or he can't admit he's wrong.

On Engendering Strong Reactions